Say What's On Your Mind
by her name is erika
Summary: "It was me. I was driving the car that hit Grandma." / Or, in which 2019 starts with Reed telling the truth while Victoria hides several of her own. Hypocritical, she knows.


**Say What's On Your Mind  
show:** Young & the Restless  
 **central characters:** Victoria Newman, Reed Hellstrom, mentions Nikki Newman, Casey Reed  
 **summary:** "It was me. I was driving the car that hit Grandma." / Or, in which 2019 starts with Reed telling the truth while Victoria hides several of her own. Hypocritical, she knows.  
 **note:** This was supposed to be something else, but turned into this. It's a little rough and I don't like it, but whatever I guess. Enjoy all the same. This is actually short by my standards. It's kind of rough, but forgive any typos. I'll do a better edit later.  
 **disclaimer:** Nothing's mine.

* * *

"The person who hit Grandma wasn't the one who kidnapped her."

Something in Reed's tone, in his eyes, makes her take pause. Victoria questions how he knows that. Is it media innuendo? Does he get information from whispers among his friends, who have parents who talk? Victoria exhales like she's bracing for Reed to confess his fears, his hopes, but never his secrets. It's minutes into 2019 and Victoria hasn't made any resolutions but she'll be fair and listen. The clock ticks a few minutes past midnight but it feels like longer. Reed turns away from her, hiding the little frightened little boy away from her. It's what he does as she became vaguely aware that as of 29th of November, he's eighteen. Eighteen. 2019 will be his first full adult year but as she watches Reed's shoulder slump and his breath is a shuddery sounding one, Victoria wants to make it better.

Scrapes. Cuts. Imaginary monsters. All of these things are things that can be fixed with a kiss, a really cool band-aid and sometimes, freshly baked cookies. Thunderstorms have him fearful and sending him running into the safety of her arms as a little boy.

"Reed, please," she finally says, breaking a silence that is entirely too long. Her nerves stretch themselves a little more than they already are. Victoria's head and heart pounds. She can't take any unknowns. She can't have any question left unanswered. Not after everything. Not after everything since that Girl's Night. "How do you know that?"

Of course, the kidnapper and hit-and-run driver is one and the same person.

Reed turns around to look at her. She can see JT in his eyes, herself in his demeanour.

Look for the band-aids. Find the wounds. Stem the emotional bleeding. Figure out a plan and find a way to fortify the cage that holds of the monsters of domestic abuse and her own resentment at bay. Victoria grows accustomed to her own monsters but she can't allow her son to give life to some of his own. He's too young and a better person, she'll admit.

"I was driving," he confesses so quietly she swears she doesn't hear it the first time. It's like an invisible hand turns the volume in the room down, so she can be tuned into her son. He continues, staring her in the face. "It was me. I was driving the car that hit Grandma."

"How?"

The question tumbles out of her mouth. It's the word her brain can piece together. She makes a promise to understand her son, talk to him and not at him. She also promises to hear not what he's saying but what he isn't. The things unsaid.

She shakes her head. "That's not possible. You have a suspended license. What would make you get behind the wheel of someone's else car?" she observes him, out of finding a reason why Reed makes that kind of decision. "Why would you do that?"

"I've asked myself every day since. Why would I do it? But I would have felt worse if I didn't. I know I would have. I…was only trying to help, I swear."

"Who was it?"

Reed glances away from her. Victoria marvels at how tall he is, how being an adult isn't something far away for her anymore. It's here. Reed is practically a grown man but through her eyes, he's so small to her. She inhales sharply and really sees how Reed shrinks under the weight of his swirling maelstrom of emotions.

"It doesn't matter," he mutters, swearing. She lets it slide this time. When he looks at her, he's flushed and he's losing a battle to keep the tears away from his eyes. Reed sinks into the single chair, face in his hands before wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. "It doesn't matter who, Mom… I just… If I knew it was Grandma, I would have stopped. I didn't because I panicked. I knew if I did, it would be _so_ much worse but I made things worse anyway. I wouldn't have left her and now she's missing. I messed up and I know I could do to jail. Mom, Grandpa's missing. Like really missing. If Grandma dies…"

Victoria kneels in front of her son, heartbroken she can't stop this. He's suffering and no, it's a lie. She can stop it. She can confess. Victoria has the power to let all of this unravel and pull the loose thread keeping this shadowed tapestry, heavy with deceit, woven with her mother, Phyllis and Sharon on that balmy evening last spring. She finds herself falling that night which is strangely okay with her because in true Newman fashion, she will catch herself. She's in this emotional blizzard of snow and ice that night, frostbitten to her core but these three women give her a warm place to land. Sometimes, the flames burn her and make her blood fizz just beneath in the surface of her smooth exterior. Victoria feels like she may explode and burst but she doesn't. Not without the aftershocks taking her mother, Sharon and Phyllis down with her.

As tears spring to her eyes, Victoria makes another conclusion she has to live with. One that she wrestles with. One she will always struggle with. Reed is drowning in a sea of guilt, shame and forces himself to swim to the surface of truth even though doing that will trap him in the whirlpool of legalities. Her son is far better than her. Her teenager is far better at knowing to free the ghosts when she goes between locking them away and letting them stay.

"Hey, hey, hey," she assures, softly but firmly. "Your grandmother will be fine."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do," Victoria answers, absolutely comfortable in her mother's strength and how powerful she is even when her mother is at her lowest. Even when she holds the weight of this secret and JT seems to be more dangerous dead than alive. She tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, revealing the pair of star shaped earrings Aunt Casey she receives for Christmas this year. She remembers the message attached and its double meaning.

 _Stars are born out of pressure – forces that compress forces of gravity and interstellar gasses. In fusion, they shine. Out of struggle comes beauty. Your great-grandmother taught your mother & I that. Merry Christmas. Love, Aunt Casey. _

"How? Because you're my mom and just know? It's not like finding out Santa isn't real."

Victoria stands and so does he. He paces and Victoria knows to give his space, but she points upstairs and presses a finger to her lips.

"Shh. Santa is real," Victoria corrects, glancing upstairs, "to your brother and sister."

"Sorry," Reed replies, clearly exhausted from something more than physical. "I'm just scared. I'm allowed to feel guilty, aren't I?"

"You are, but you know how I know your grandmother isn't going anywhere?"

"How?"

"Because of that connection," Victoria explains, with a soft smile. She's her father's daughter in her thinking, her rationale sometimes, in her hard line in business and in her demeanour. She even shares the same humor, hunger and semi-Machiavellian views although hers is tempered by what is necessary to be done. That connection she feels tug at her edges of mind like hope lingering in the shadow of relenting. "That connection we both felt whenever we saw her. For me," she explains, moving to the bigger couch to sit across from Reed. It's enough distance to be with him and leave him alone at the same time. "It's like a cable. Cables are strong when the strands thin out from weight of fighting. I feel like that cable there and it's still unbroken. She's missing, but not gone."

"I do. I know what you mean. About the connection. I feel it too. It feels like…" he starts and then trails off, glancing down at his hands. Victoria sees a slight tremble in them. One of the silver rings on his fingers glints at her like a car headlight and Victoria's heart clenches. "I just…"

"You just what?"

Reed stands up and rubs a hand across his face. "Mom, I'm just sorry. I put you in this really crappy place. My dad is dead and I could have taken Grandma away."

She inhales, thankful there's no fire poker.

Victoria has enough reminders of the abuse to live with.

"Would it be okay with you if I just went to bed?"

She catches the glimpse of a tattoo on her wrist. She gets a year ago after a trip from Italy she desperately needs even though it's not known at the time. Something literally etched, typed into her skin. It's small, two small words she looks at and can still grounded and centered. This still matters to her but Victoria can't exhale and inhale her way these days to equilibrium when she can remember not breathing while JT's hands – these hands she remembers being so gentle – imprints bruises uglier. The shades of purple disappear but she can't quite look at that colour the same anymore.

If she can wake up, be present for her children, exhale, inhale, and just function, it's enough. If Victoria can hold on that thread – the same thread that runs from Mom to Aunt Casey, through her and is in Reed's grasp, she'll have hope and carry everyone's else when they can't.

Victoria stands and relents with conditions. Of course.

She has to know who is involved. Who Reed compromises himself for.

"Yes. Of course."

"Thank you," Reed says, and takes strides towards the bannister. His foot touches the first step and she has to get the whole story now or he won't tell her. She learns that Billy is a sounding board for her son. Things sound different from him because she's not a teenage boy, never is quite man and a spike of resentment cuts her in between Victoria inhaling and exhaling for so many reasons. She's appreciative to Billy for fulfilling something in Reed he needs. There's a dark space that Victoria is swirling around in. Sometimes, it's a tornado. A twister that lifts the roof of her house, tosses the furniture around and collapses Newman Enterprises as she does her hardest to save it.

Victoria can't quite get her feet on the ground and there are no ruby red shoes to take her home. But she can be a mother. That's easy.

"You still haven't told me who you tried to help."

"Mom, let it go."

"I can't help you if I don't know everything. I know," she assures, softly, "what it's like to make mistakes and wish for do-overs. Yes, even a perfectionist like me messes up. But I'm your mother. I have to protect you. Tell me what's missing."

He does pause on the third step, turns around and confesses, with a resigned tone and a shrug. "It was Charlie, Mom. His girlfriend dumped him and he wasn't handling it. He was drinking. I suggested we go to a party to get his mind off things. And well, everything happened…" he trails off, leaving her to fill in the blanks of what is there but all she can do is fill the things unsaid with what can happen.

"Charlie Ashby, as in _Cane's_ son?"

"Yeah," he confirms. A silence. A heartbeat. A moment for Victoria to grab on to clarity she desperately needs. Maybe another beat of silence to fight the instinctual to curl her hands into fists so tightly her nails press into her palms. Reed speaks again, and she blinks out of Now, you know."

She can feel her body tense and the words on her tongue, pressing against the pearly gates of her teeth. They creep up her throat, sentences along the lines of " _what were you thinking_?" and " _why would you do that?_ " string themselves together but she will not release them. Reed needs understanding. He needs support. He needs to know that unconditional love means exactly that. That there's nothing he can ever do to change how much and deeply she loves him.

Victoria clears her throat to clear the fog of red creeping into her sight. Of course, _Cane_.

"Okay," Victoria says, more than herself than him. There's the beginnings of a plan taking root in her head. She doesn't have time to be angry, worry, teeter on the edge of hope and tumble into the internal neverending storm on her mind – some of it nurtured of her making. Victoria muses she's down a good job. She nods, sure now and meets his gaze with resolve of her own. "I'll talk to Cane in the morning. Just try to get some rest."

"Okay," Reed comes down a step to kiss her lightly on the cheek. "Goodnight, Mom and um, happy New Year."

She offers him a smile. "Goodnight, honey."

Victoria's eyes follows his form as he goes upstairs, counts the footfalls of his feet going along the length of her upstairs hallway before he retreats to his room. The one with the door painted red. She hears the door click close. Only then does Victoria let out a breath she realizes she's holding. Her body seems to have a mind of its own, looking for a safe place when she wants to act, react.

She sinks on the third stair as if some unseen kind hand offers her a seat.

"Happy New Year, Reed," she whispers softly, long after he's gone.

There's just her unspooling mind, the silence and hoping tonight the ghosts stay away for another night.


End file.
